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Published: August 6th 2007
Look mum no hands...
Elephant riding in Chang MaiOk,
Chang Mai was fantastic. We booked a one day trek that included a hike to a 'traditional' hill tribe village, elephant riding, bamboo rafting, a waterfall visit and a karen village visit.
The Elephants were AWESOME!!! At first we were annoyed that our elephant was tied to the one in front but it ended up being great cause it meant we didn't have a local guide riding our elephant so each of us had a turn riding on the elphant's neck!!! We sat with our legs hanging just behind his ears and got to rub his head and give him a hug. After about an hour we ended up back at the base and fed them bananas.
For our village visits, one was about a 45minute trek straight up hill! At the top Lew bought a coke!!! They had an esky with ice and everything. Our guide explained that there was now a road which could be used by doctors to visit pregnant women rather than them having to walk down the hill when in labour. The huts were labelled in english and there was a hut that was set aside as a museum which was pretty
Chang Mai Market
Part of the cooking tour. interesting but not a lot of information to go with it.
The second village we drove to and watched some women weaving which was pretty complicated. Apparently it takes 3 days to weave one scarf and we bought two for only 200 baht (about $10).
To make sure we really got our moneys worth on a flat out day trek tour, we also stopped off at a waterfall and went for a swim. We had great plans to swim underneath the waterfall with our new Olympus waterproof camera but neather of us were strong enough to actually swim that far. We got to a point and just swam on the spot. Pretty good excercise really.
Then we had about an hour rafting down river. We got on a raft with the 2 other aussies in the group and a cheeky guide who kept splashing us. We really should have just worn our swimmers but it was so much fun.
Our cooking class was also well worth it. It was just The 2 of us and a Dutch couple and our teacher. We chose 4 dishes between us from a recipe book that we got to keep
Butterfly on a temple bell
There were bells all around the temple. and went to the markets to buy our ingredients. Who knew there were so many types of eggplant!! We each cooked our own single serve of each dish - fried rice, green chicken curry, stir fried chicken with holy basil and hot and sour prawn soup (YUM!!!). We'll definitely be cooking when we get home!!!
We're now back in Bangkok for a few days before heading south to Koh Samui, Koh Phan Ngang and Phuket. We met up with Stephen (Lew's cousin from England) yesterday and pretty much drank our way through our days budget. Feeling the effects today though. We did manage to make it home on the sky train and then a tuk tuk so we wern't too bad (as far as we can remember).
Cheers,
Lew and Holly
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